The present application relates to ventilators for exhausting fumes, hot air, humid air, malodorous air, and the like from an enclosed space, and particularly relates to such ventilators passively utilizing wind to generate a reduced pressure zone within the ventilator and surrounding an exhaust port opening into the ventilator.
Vent conduits are often provided in boats, leading from an engine room or a sewage holding tank to a port located on a side of a boat hull. Also, it is desirable to prevent entry of water into a port yet to be able to exhaust fumes or stale air through the port from within the boat hull. Ventilation conduits may be provided similarly to allow stale or undesirably hot or humid air to escape from spaces within buildings or within truck cargo boxes, intermodal cargo containers, passenger automobiles, motorhomes or other recreational vehicles. It is desirable to be able to encourage such fumes or stale or otherwise undesirable air to be exhausted to the outside and to do so without having to utilize a powered fan or the like.
While a conduit can provide a path for exhausting air from an enclosed space, an opening at the outer end of the conduit, unless protected, can admit wind, rain, snow, and undesired airborne debris into a space intended to be ventilated, and so a ventilator is desired that can cover an opening such as a port at the end of an exhaust conduit, allowing gas to exhaust but discouraging flow back into the exhaust conduit.
In some applications it is important to protect an existing vent port or exhaust conduit port from exposure to wind, windborne debris, pollutants, rain, or other water. In other applications it is desirable to utilize the wind or relative wind to assist in exhausting air from an interior space from which a ventilation duct leads to a port opening through an exterior surface exposed to wind.